you had and lost the one thing you kept in a safe place

The triptych window in my living room gives me a view of the sky, glancingly pinned to the earth at the bottom of the frame by an apartment block rooftop and the sparse canopy of a nearby gum tree. I forget, sometimes (because when I'm home it's mostly at night and the blind is invariably down) just how perfect it is to lie back and watch the clouds slip on by.

Right now, I'm watching the thick, grey rain clouds draw across the sky, marching the last of the day's light away. There's one that's hanging lower than the rest, a great reaching quadruped of a cloud, like a hungry dragon scouring the land below for sustenance as it passes by. Already it's crossed from the first window frame to the last — they're moving deceptively fast, these clouds.

I have action scenes to write in the faerie novel, and watching this sky is leaving me in a languorous mood entirely unsuited to writing them.

Dammit, she said half-heartedly.

Star Mile (Joshua Radin — We Were Here)

19 September 2009 @ 18:01 |

i am getting shameless in the cadging of free rides

Okay, who noticed that I used the word "warning" no less than three times in my previous post? Worse, said usage occurred not just in the one post, but in the space of two sentences. The shame! This is why editors are worth more than they are paid — because when I get tired, or even just pressed for time, I will re-use words like a dog with a nervous twitch.

Sadly, this blog has no editor, and thus you all must suffer through my nervous twitches. Sorry 'bout that.

(But not sorry enough to be bothered going back and fixing it.)

Actually, I've had a pretty lacklustre week, as far as the writing goes. This is partly because of the rain on Monday making the library exceedingly unappealing of an afternoon, partly because I took Wednesday off to go to a gig (TOTALLY worth it, I've been humming the songs from that set list ever since), and partly because there was a sort of challenge thrown down at the dayjob and I've been breaking myself in an attempt to best it.

Have I mentioned that I get a little competitive when there are goals and targets in sight? If only I could harness this power for good. Or even evil world domination. I'm not picky, at the end of the day.

29 August 2009 @ 22:57 | 2 Comments

a thousand words a day – or you'll never write again

Today I learned that my understanding of the applicability of the phrase "nature abhors a vacuum" was, in fact, completely and utterly misguided. At least according to wikipedia. And we all know what a veritable wealth of reputable information wikipedia is.1

After my sleep-deprived week, I enjoyed a stupefyingly, blissfully quiet weekend which, quite frankly, I wasn't ready to be done with. I demand a recount, damnit! Then I caught up with some writerly friends last night, during which I once again felt ogrishly unproductive by comparison. (You would think I would learn to stop with the comparisons, but apparently I'm a bit slow on that particular uptake.) Oh well. These things happen. I would claim it helped me keep my backside in the library chair this afternoon despite my desire for a nap, but in truth it was the rain which started shortly after my arrival at the library which kept me there.

That rain, and the soaking it gave me on the trudge home, will make going to the library tomorrow afternoon an uphill battle. Rainy days always test my resolve.

But right now, if you'll excuse me, I may or may not be about to eat my own bodyweight in crepes for dinner.

  1. Although, to be fair to the wiki: if the topic is at all related to pop-culture references, I'm not going to argue with it. On science it can get shaky, but on The Simpsons, wiki is da man. [↩]

24 August 2009 @ 20:51 | 2 Comments

the atlantic is not a damn girl

Let it be known that live music is good for the soul.

Now, I'll grant you that seeing Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Tex Perkins in the space of two nights, one of said nights being a school night no less, may have been more than my bio-rhythms were prepared to cope with, and I would have far preferred to get more than 9 hours sleep in the last 57, but…eh. It was worth it. I REGRET NOTHING.

Of course, as a consequence, today has so far been spent playing catch-up on the chores. And, er, lolling upon the couch. Which is how I intend to pass the rest of the afternoon. Although, in the interests of being a somewhat productive member of society, said lolling will be accompanied by words on the faerie novel, and edits on "Shaping Lily". At some point.

Honest.

22 August 2009 @ 15:42 |

just your typical glamorous day, really

All week I was promised: 20°C on Saturday. And now Saturday is here, and I'm sitting on the couch wearing my fingerless gloves and wrapped in a throw rug, because it is very clearly NOT 20°C. No doubt when I leave the house this afternoon, the wind will sweep itself and all the clouds away to the south and Melbourne will start to bake and I, I will be overdressed and thus I will suffer. This is the natural way of things.

So far this morning, I have managed to wake up at 6:39 (and this is despite not getting to sleep until about 02:30 and where can I lodge a complaint about my bio-rhythms, anyway?) and pick my way through maybe half of the copyedits on "Shaping Lily". Suffice to say I've had better days as far as focus is concerned. Ah well.

Now I think it's time for breakfast.

Before I dive back into wrangling that effing car-crash of a narrative the faerie novel.

ETA: Since the A-format of Shadow Queen should be hitting bookshelves soon, it occurs to me now would be a good time to remind visitors to the blog that you can read the first chapter online for free.

15 August 2009 @ 12:15 |

just keep going, dammit

Last Saturday, a friend of mine said he might take a break from the novel for a bit, because he wasn't sure quite where it was going, and he didn't like it very much at the moment. And I told him that meant he was most definitely Not Allowed to put the novel aside for a bit. Put a novel down when you don't like it very much, and you run the very real risk of never picking it up again. And the only way to be quite sure of where the novel is going is to actually write it, and see where it takes you. Plenty of time to assess whether it went in the right direction once you've gotten there.

(For those planning-type writers out there, that last snippet of advice is going to sound heinous and dreadful and like telling small children they should totally just run out into the middle of a busy road without looking first, everything will be fine, and for that matter strangers present no danger whatsoever and while we're at it, in the interests of making sure you fit in at school, have you considered smoking? I can only say I'M SORRY, but I don't plan my stories in advance. In fact, writing them in linear fashion is still kinda new to me, and something I'm struggling with, and if I could come up with a substitute analogy for you pre-planning types I would. Honest.)

Anyrate, the point of all the above is this: I have totally spent the past two weeks avoiding my novel. Because I'm not sure quite where it's going. And I don't like it very much at the moment.

I've had all sorts of reasonable and legitimate excuses. Edits on a short story needed to be done.1 Then when those edits were done, there was no point picking up the novel again because edits on Pledged should be landing on my desk soonish, and if I picked up the novel again I'd only have to put it down again. So I picked up a short story instead, because I don't have any finished short stories to submit and perhaps I could work on that. Only I've just hit a point in the short story wherein I'm not sure quite where it's going, and I don't like it very much at the moment AND ARE YOU SENSING A PATTERN, PEOPLE?

Because I sure as heck am. And, quite frankly, I don't like it very much.

The thing is, the middle of a story is always hell. (I have even heard the pre-planning types opine this, although presumably for different reasons.) This is partly why it's not-very-affectionately known as the muddle, among other names.2 And every single time I attempt a story, without fail, I have to learn this lesson about the muddle anew. Every single time I have to remind myself that it's not okay to put the thing down, the key is to get past this section, however I can. Slog through the words until I find a way out; leave a note "And then something genius happens!" and skip ahead; consume some stimulant of choice and stay up all night; try whatever trick has worked in the past and even a few that haven't, because every story is different, but whatever you do: just. keep. going.

So. Time to figure out a trick that will work for the novel.

  1. Okay, that one actually is quite reasonable and legitimate, but in the interests of full disclosure I'm including it. Because it was the excuse I jumped on to start this whole avoidance caper rolling, after all. [↩]
  2. My novels always earn themselves appellations like THAT EFFING CAR-CRASH OF A NARRATIVE around this time. For full impact it must be delivered through tight lips and with narrowed eyes and followed by the phrase WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT IT ANY MORE. Which is promptly followed by brooding silence and then, just when my friends have tentatively moved on to another subject, interrupting them with an angst-ridden yawp and the desperate plea MAKE IT WORK WHY IS IT BROKEN PUT IT BACK TOGETHER FOR ME! [↩]

29 July 2009 @ 17:55 | 6 Comments

everyone needs somewhere to run to

I've finished the first round of edits on "Shaping Lily" and sent them winging on their way back to the editor — who will doubtless send them straight back with a "Good work! You fixed exactly a drabble of the stuff that needed fixing…here's the stuff you didn't fix back again so you can have another go at that, and while we're at it here's some more!" Because edits are never done in one pass, and fixing one niggle always makes other jagged bits stand out. Writing is in the re-writing, as someone (actually probably various someones) famous has already opined.

Last night, instead of turning back to the poor oft-abandoned faerie novel as I should have done, I worked on a short story. Poor faerie novel: it has been picked up and put down so often it's surely going to have some serious continuity issues. And probably a good few narrative drive issues into the bargain. (Poor me, who will need to fix them!) All my stories get abandoned at some point, because my brain likes to switch to a different problem when I hit the middle of the story.1

Tonight… tonight I cannot decide what to work on. And I am getting distracted by Apple Dictionary only being in American English. Why is there no Australian English dictionary? Or at least a British English dictionary? I DO NOT SPEAK OR SPELL AMGLISH, APPLE.

  1. The one story which was written without any periods of abandonment, even minor ones, is Shadow Queen — although it did have its periods of stalled work while I grumbled and glared at it and muttered under my breath about recalcitrant plotlines. [↩]

23 July 2009 @ 18:10 | 2 Comments

i hate to say it, but you're perfect together

Tactic: set the alarm clock for five minutes later. More sleep!

The world's answering gambit: garbage trucks. Ten minutes earlier. Ugh.

World: 1, Deb: 0.

Bit of a slow effort, writing last night, because I got distracted by playing with Scrivener. I suppose I could argue that I didn't get entirely distracted and skip writing altogether, and it would be a true argument, but a weakish one nonetheless. Bad author. No biscuit. No wonder the world sent me garbage trucks this morning by way of punishment.

Actually, it's occurred to me that I haven't spoken much about my writing on this blog of late. Or, in actual fact, quite some time. I suspect this is because I'm in the alpha draft of the faerie novel, and I'm one of those writers who isn't comfortable talking about a story until I've got something pinned to the page. My alpha drafts are usually shockingly incomplete, the equivalent of snagging a butterfly by the wingtip. It's an imperfect process, to say the least, because at best a few scales are going to shake loose and the snagged butterfly is going to look a little tatty. Sometimes the damn butterfly would rather rip its wing off than be caught, and I'm left with nothing but a ragged handful of dreck.

I would far rather be one of those efficient, organised types who nets the butterfly and pins it through the heart in one go, but of course I'd rather have wings of my own and buckets of gold to boot, for that matter.

Untouchable Face (Ani Di Franco — Living In Clip)

7 July 2009 @ 16:30 |

i'm going back to the start…

I woke up off-colour yesterday, and felt too sick to do much of anything…so I cranked up Scrivener (at long last) and tried to figure out whether it would work for me.

I'm still undecided. I suspect I erred in attempting to discover how it works while in the middle of a novel, rather than starting fresh. I transferred most of the text of the faerie novel across into a scrivener file, and discovered that Scrivener feels the novel is almost 6,000 words longer than Microsoft Word thinks it is. Interesting… This evening I discovered a second way of counting words in Scrivener,1 which tells me the novel is only 200ish words longer than Microsoft Word's tally. I do not understand yet why Scrivener feels the need to count words in two different realities simultaneously. Or which one I'm supposed to trust.

Either way, I've written basically 50,000 words of the faerie novel so far…and the faeries have only just turned up. That's a whole lotta non-faerie faerie story to start off with there.2

I suspect I'm not going to like the rewrite of this book very much.

But then, that could just be the dreaded muddle talking. Here's hoping, eh?3

  1. using the Project Statistics window, as opposed to the Project Targets window, for those who care [↩]
  2. In my defense, there has been killing while the faeries weren't around. Never let it be said that all my characters survive my stories. [↩]
  3. Now, where did I leave that plot, anyway? [↩]

The Scientist (Live) (Aimee Mann — Lost In Space)

6 July 2009 @ 20:50 | 4 Comments

honest to goodness news

An email from my publisher today tells me that the mass market paperback version of Shadow Queen should be available for purchase before the end of the year. This means those of you who hate and loathe the trade paperback format, or don't hate it so much as think it's simply too expensive, will have the chance to buy the smaller, cheaper format. Much more suitable for shoving in small bags and reading on buses and trains and planes.

This means the current publication date for the second book, which I've been calling Pledged (but the title is already slated for change), should be hitting shelves around March 2010.

The (first round of) publication edits for Pledged are due to land on my desk inside the next month. At which point I'll probably have to put aside the faerie novel and retreat from the world until they're done, because otherwise they'll never get done and the book won't be out in March because I'll still be slaving away over where to put my commas and everyone who's waiting to find out how on earth Matilde manages to dig herself out of the hole the first book put her in will come and bludgeon me to a paste with their trade paperback versions of the book.1

  1. Except for Tessa, who already knows what happens. But she may join in just in the interests of solidarity, I suppose. [↩]

Who Cares Anyway? (The Jackson Code — The Second Greatest Story Ever Told [Disc 2])

18 June 2009 @ 19:23 | 6 Comments
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